26/03/2016: NUS Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum Workshop Throwback!

It has certainly been a rejuvenating break after the Term Exam and it is time to prepare for school! For these subsequent Biology tutorials, we'll be going through the Evolution tutorial. 

This reminds me of the National University of Singapore Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum Evolution Workshop that our school organised for us. We were quite fortunate as the Singapore whale was set up just a day before we visited, so we were the first few to see it!

Let me bring you through our 3-hour adventure!

Museum Walkthrough

The Singapore Whale: "Jubi Lee"--named after Singapore's SG50 jubilee year

We were greeted by the magnificent display of the Singapore whale. The whale specimen was found in Singapore waters and within 6 months of preparation, it was ready for visitors already! The museum guide told us that if we went closer, we could still smell the skeleton.

Thrash found in Jubi Lee's stomach

What our museum guide told us next was certainly quite horrifying-- four plastic cups and tissue packets were found in the whale's stomach! He informed us that this is what we, humans, are doing to the environment and the marine life. It made us reflect deeply that even as individuals, we still have some degree of responsibility over managing our trash properly.

Pelvic bone of the Singapore Whale

 Can you guess what that bone hanging from the whale's tail is? Nope! It's not its male reproductive organ! It's a female, by the way. It is the whale's pelvic bone! The pelvic bone's function is to connect the spine to the lower limbs, which the whale lacks! Since there is no real need for a pelvic bone, it has evolved to a small size.

Anthropod fossil

 This is an anthropod, an invertebrate animal with an exoskeleton. Here, our guide told us that evolution can give rise to "new" genetic information being formed. This is through chromosomal aberrations that result in duplication of segments of the chromosome, which after further chromosomal aberrations and base-pair substitutions and additions/ deletions, can result in new genetic information being formed.

Tetrapod

 This is a tetrapod, a very important specimen discovered that served as the crucial evidence to the now-accepted fact that humans actually evolved from fish! In fact, all tetrapods are considered "fish", including amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals!

Specimen 05: Female and Male Spider

This Specimen 05 contains both a male and a female spider! The male spider is very much smaller in size than its female counterpart, due to sexual selection. Can you find the male spider? 
Hint: It's on one of the legs!

The museum walk-through had too many specimens for me to showcase all of them, so I'll just leave you guys to visit it on your own! 

P.S. Our museum guide told us that the feathers of a bird's initial function was for it to keep warm instead of for flight! This struck me deeply because I never knew that a selection pressure can lead to an additional trait!

Hands-on Activity Worksheet
After the museum walk-through, we had a hands-on activity where we analysed animal specimens and did a worksheet.

Hand-drawn anatomical structures of pentadactyl limbs in vertebrates

In this activity, we had to observe the limbs of the specimens, then draw and label parts of the limbs homologous to a human arm. The pentadactyl limbs are that of turtles, bats, and pigeons respectively.

There were 5 activities in total, but I personally felt that this would be the most interesting to showcase because of my drawings! (I'm quite proud of them.)

Conclusion:

That's it! I am quite thankful for my school tutors for giving me the chance to go to the NUS Lee Kong Chian History Museum because it really opened my eyes about evolution! It showed me that organisms all around us are the results over billions of years of evolution and they are pretty darn close to perfection (I think).

Edit:
This is the hands-on activity that we did for 1 out of 2 hours of the workshop.
Disclaimer: I am quite busy in this period of time so I did not check the accuracy of my answers.